There went about the Rue Saint Jacques a notable shaking of heads on the day that Catherine de Vaucelles was betrothed to François de Montcorbier.
"Holy Virgin!" said the Rue Saint Jacques; "the girl is a fool. Why has she not taken Noël d'Arnaye,--Noël the Handsome? I grant you Noël is an ass, but, then, look you, he is of the nobility. He has the Dauphin's favor. Noël will be a great man when our exiled Dauphin comes back from Geneppe to be King of France. Then, too, she might have had Philippe Sermaise. Sermaise is a priest, of course, and one may not marry a priest, but Sermaise has money, and Sermaise is mad for love of her. She might have done worse. But François! Ho, death of my life, what is François? Perhaps--he, he!--perhaps Ysabeau de Montigny might inform us, you say? Doubtless Ysabeau knows more of him than she would care to confess, but I measure the lad by other standards. François is inoffensive enough, I dare assert, but what does Catherine see in him? He is a scholar?--well, the College of Navarre has furnished food for the gallows before this. A poet?--rhyming will not fill the pot. Rhymes are a thin diet for two lusty young folk like these. And who knows if Guillaume de Villon, his foster-father, has one sou to rub against another? He is canon at Saint Benôit-le-Bétourné yonder, but canons are not Midases. The girl will have a hard life of it, neighbor, a hard life, I tell you, if--but, yes!--if Ysabeau de Montigny does not knife her some day. Oh, beyond doubt, Catherine has played the fool."
Thus far the Rue Saint Jacques.
This was on the day of the Fête-Dieu. It was on this day that Noël d'Arnaye blasphemed for a matter of a half-hour and then went to the Crowned Ox, where he drank himself into a contented insensibility; that Ysabeau de Montigny, having wept a little, sent for Gilles Raguyer, a priest and aforetime a rival of François de Montcorbier for her favors; and that Philippe Sermaise grinned and said nothing. But afterward Sermaise gnawed at his under lip like a madman as he went about seeking for François de Montcorbier.
2. "Deux estions, et n'avions qu'ung Cueur"
It verged upon nine in the evening--a late hour in those days--when François climbed the wall of Jehan de Vaucelles' garden.
A wall!--and what is a wall to your true lover? What bones, pray, did the Sieur Pyramus, that ill-starred Babylonish knight, make of a wall? did not his protestations slip through a chink, mocking at implacable granite and more implacable fathers? Most assuredly they did; and Pyramus was a pattern to all lovers. Thus ran the meditations of Master François as he leapt down into the garden.
He had not, you must understand, seen Catherine for three hours. Three hours! three eternities rather, and each one of them spent in Malebolge. Coming to a patch of moonlight, François paused there and cut an agile caper, as he thought of that approaching time when he might see Catherine every day.
"Madame François de Montcorbier," he said, tasting each syllable with gusto. "Catherine de Montcorbier. Was there ever a sweeter juxtaposition of sounds? It is a name for an angel. And an angel shall bear it,--eh, yes, an angel, no less. O saints in Paradise, envy me! Envy me," he cried, with a heroical gesture toward the stars, "for François would change places with none of you."
He crept through ordered rows of chestnuts and acacias to a window wherein burned a dim light. He unslung a lute from his shoulder and began to sing, secure in the knowledge that deaf old Jehan de Vaucelles was not likely to be disturbed by sound of any nature till that time when it should please high God that the last trump be noised about the tumbling heavens.
It was good to breathe the mingled odor of roses and mignonette that was thick about him. It was good to sing to her a wailing song of unrequited love and know that she loved him. François dallied with his bliss, parodied his bliss, and--as he complacently reflected,--lamented in the moonlight with as tuneful a dolor as Messire Orpheus may have evinced when he carolled in Hades.
Sang François:
"O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone!
O Grace of her, that hath no grace for me!
O Love of her, the bit that guides me on
To sorrow and to grievous misery!
O felon Charms, my poor heart's enemy!
O furtive murderous Pride! O pitiless, great
Cold Eyes of her! have done with cruelty!
Have pity upon me ere it be too late!
"Happier for me if elsewhere I had gone
For pity--ah, far happier for me,
Since never of her may any grace be won,
And lest dishonor slay me, I must flee.
'Haro!' I cry, (and cry how uselessly!)
'Haro!' I cry to folk of all estate,
"For I must die unless it chance that she
Have pity upon me ere it be too late.
"M'amye, that day in whose disastrous sun
Your beauty's flower must fade and wane and be
No longer beautiful, draws near,--whereon
I will nor plead nor mock;--not I, for we
Shall both be old and vigorless! M'amye,
Drink deep of love, drink deep, nor hesitate
Until the spring run dry, but speedily
Have pity upon me--ere it be too late!
"Lord Love, that all love's lordship hast in fee,
Lighten, ah, lighten thy displeasure's weight,
For all true hearts should, of Christ's charity,
Have pity upon me ere it be too late."
Then from above a delicate and cool voice was audible. "You have mistaken the window, Monsieur de Montcorbier. Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre."
"Ah, cruel!" sighed François. "Will you never let that kite hang upon the wall?"
"It is all very well to groan like a bellows. Guillemette Moreau did not sup here for nothing. I know of the verses you made her,--and the gloves you gave her at Candlemas, too. Saint Anne!" observed the voice, somewhat sharply; "she needed gloves. Her hands are so much raw beef. And the head-dress at Easter,--she looks like the steeple of Saint Benoit in it. But every man to his taste, Monsieur de Montcorbier. Good-night, Monsieur de Montcorbier." But, for all that, the window did not close.
"Catherine--!" he pleaded; and under his breath he expressed uncharitable aspirations as to the future of Guillemette Moreau.
"You have made me very unhappy," said the voice, with a little sniff.
"It was before I knew you, Catherine. The stars are beautiful, m'amye, and a man may reasonably admire them; but the stars vanish and are forgotten when the sun appears."
"Ysabeau is not a star," the voice pointed out; "she is simply a lank, good-for-nothing, slovenly trollop."
"Ah, Catherine--!"
"You are still in love with her."
"Catherine--!"
"Otherwise, you will promise me for the future to avoid her as you would the Black Death."
"Catherine, her brother is my friend--!"
"René de Montigny is, to the knowledge of the entire Rue Saint Jacques, a gambler and a drunkard and, in all likelihood, a thief. But you prefer, it appears, the Montignys to me. An ill cat seeks an ill rat. Very heartily do I wish you joy of them. You will not promise? Good-night, then, Monsieur de Montcorbier."
"Mother of God! I promise, Catherine."
From above Mademoiselle de Vaucelles gave a luxurious sigh. "Dear François!" said she.
"You are a tyrant," he complained. "Madame Penthesilea was not more cruel. Madame Herodias was less implacable, I think. And I think that neither was so beautiful."
"I love you," said Mademoiselle de Vaucelles, promptly.
"But there was never any one so many fathoms deep in love as I. Love bandies me from the postern to the frying-pan, from hot to cold. Ah, Catherine, Catherine, have pity upon my folly! Bid me fetch you Prester John's beard, and I will do it; bid me believe the sky is made of calf-skin, that morning is evening, that a fat sow is a windmill, and I will do it. Only love me a little, dear."
"My king, my king of lads!" she murmured.
"My queen, my tyrant of unreason! Ah, yes, you are all that is ruthless and abominable, but then what eyes you have! Oh, very pitiless, large, lovely eyes--huge sapphires that in the old days might have ransomed every monarch in Tamerlane's stable! Even in the night I see them, Catherine."
"Yet Ysabeau's eyes are brown."
"Then are her eyes the gutter's color. But Catherine's eyes are twin firmaments."
And about them the acacias rustled lazily, and the air was sweet with the odors of growing things, and the world, drenched in moonlight, slumbered. Without was Paris, but old Jehan's garden-wall cloistered Paradise.
"Has the world, think you, known lovers, long dead now, that were once as happy as we?"
"Love was not known till we discovered it."
"I am so happy, François, that I fear death."
"We have our day. Let us drink deep of love, not waiting until the spring run dry. Catherine, death comes to all, and yonder in the church-yard the poor dead lie together, huggermugger, and a man may not tell an archbishop from a rag-picker. Yet they have exulted in their youth, and have laughed in the sun with some lass or another lass. We have our day, Catherine."
"Our day wherein I love you!"
"And wherein I love you precisely seven times as much!"
So they prattled in the moonlight. Their discourse was no more overburdened with wisdom than has been the ordinary communing of lovers since Adam first awakened ribless. Yet they were content, who, were young in the world's recaptured youth.
Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.
3. "Et Ysabeau, Qui Dit: Enné!"
Somewhat later François came down the deserted street, treading on air. It was a bland summer night, windless, moon-washed, odorous with garden-scents; the moon, nearing its full, was a silver egg set on end--("Leda-hatched," he termed it; "one may look for the advent of Queen Heleine ere dawn"); and the sky he likened to blue velvet studded with the gilt nail-heads of a seraphic upholsterer. François was a poet, but a civic poet; then, as always, he pilfered his similes from shop-windows.
But the heart of François was pure magnanimity, the heels of François were mercury, as he tripped past the church of Saint Benoit-le-Bétourné, stark snow and ink in the moonlight. Then with a jerk François paused.
On a stone bench before the church sat Ysabeau de Montigny and Gilles Raguyer. The priest was fuddled, hiccuping in his amorous dithyrambics as he paddled with the girl's hand. "You tempt me to murder," he was saying. "It is a deadly sin, my soul, and I have no mind to fry in Hell while my body swings on the Saint Denis road, a crow's dinner. Let François live, my soul! My soul, he would stick little Gilles like a pig."
Raguyer began to blubber at the thought.
"Holy Macaire!" said François; "here is a pretty plot a-brewing." Yet because his heart was filled just now with loving-kindness, he forgave the girl. "Tantaene irae?" said François; and aloud, "Ysabeau, it is time you were abed."
She wheeled upon him in apprehension; then, with recognition, her rage flamed. "Now, Gilles!" cried Ysabeau de Montigny; "now, coward! He is unarmed, Gilles. Look, Gilles! Kill for me this betrayer of women!"
Under his mantle Francois loosened the short sword he carried. But the priest plainly had no mind to the business. He rose, tipsily fumbling a knife, and snarling like a cur at sight of a strange mastiff. "Vile rascal!" said Gilles Raguyer, as he strove to lash himself into a rage. "O coward! O parricide! O Tarquin!"
François began to laugh. "Let us have done with this farce," said he. "Your man has no stomach for battle, Ysabeau. And you do me wrong, my lass, to call me a betrayer of women. Doubtless, that tale seemed the most apt to kindle in poor Gilles some homicidal virtue: but you and I and God know that naught has passed between us save a few kisses and a trinket or so. It is no knifing matter. Yet for the sake of old time, come home, Ysabeau; your brother is my friend, and the hour is somewhat late for honest women to be abroad."
"Enné?" shrilled Ysabeau; "and yet, if I cannot strike a spark of courage from this clod here, there come those who may help me, François de Montcorbier. 'Ware Sermaise, Master François!"
François wheeled. Down the Rue Saint Jacques came Philippe Sermaise, like a questing hound, with drunken Jehan le Merdi at his heels. "Holy Virgin!" thought François; "this is likely to be a nasty affair. I would give a deal for a glimpse of the patrol lanterns just now."
He edged his way toward the cloister, to get a wall at his back. But Gilles Raguyer followed him, knife in hand. "O hideous Tarquin! O Absalom!" growled Gilles; "have you, then, no respect for churchmen?"
With an oath, Sermaise ran up. "Now, may God die twice," he panted, "if I have not found the skulker at last! There is a crow needs picking between us two, Montcorbier."
Hemmed in by his enemies, François temporized. "Why do you accost me thus angrily, Master Philippe?" he babbled. "What harm have I done you? What is your will of me?"
But his fingers tore feverishly at the strap by which the lute was swung over his shoulder, and now the lute fell at their feet, leaving François unhampered and his sword-arm free.
This was fuel to the priest's wrath. "Sacred bones of Benoit!" he snarled; "I could make a near guess as to what window you have been caterwauling under."
From beneath his gown he suddenly hauled out a rapier and struck at the boy while Francois was yet tugging at his sword.
Full in the mouth Sermaise struck him, splitting the lower lip through. Francois felt the piercing cold of the steel, the tingling of it against his teeth, then the warm grateful spurt of blood; through a red mist, he saw Gilles and Ysabeau run screaming down the Rue Saint Jacques.
He drew and made at Sermaise, forgetful of le Merdi. It was shrewd work. Presently they were fighting in the moonlight, hammer-and-tongs, as the saying is, and presently Sermaise was cursing like a madman, for François had wounded him in the groin. Window after window rattled open as the Rue Saint Jacques ran nightcapped to peer at the brawl. Then as Francois hurled back his sword to slash at the priest's shaven head--Frenchmen had not yet learned to thrust with the point in the Italian manner--Jehan le Merdi leapt from behind, nimble as a snake, and wrested away the boy's weapon. Sermaise closed with a glad shout.
"Heart of God!" cried Sermaise. "Pray, bridegroom, pray!"
But François jumped backward, tumbling over le Merdi, and with apish celerity caught up a great stone and flung it full in the priest's countenance.
The rest was hideous. For a breathing space Sermaise kept his feet, his outspread arms making a tottering cross. It was curious to see him peer about irresolutely now that he had no face. François, staring at the black featureless horror before him, began to choke. Standing thus, with outstretched arms, the priest first let fall his hands, so that they hung limp from the wrists; his finger-nails gleamed in the moonlight. His rapier tinkled on the flagstones with the sound of shattering glass, and Philippe Sermaise slid down, all a-jumble, crumpling like a broken toy. Afterward you might have heard a long, awed sibilance go about the windows overhead as the watching Rue Saint Jacques breathed again.
Francois de Montcorbier ran. He tore at his breast as he ran, stifling. He wept as he ran through the moon-washed Rue Saint Jacques, making animal-like and whistling noises. His split lip was a clammy dead thing that napped against his chin as he ran.
"François!" a man cried, meeting him; "ah, name of a name, François!"
It was René de Montigny, lurching from the Crowned Ox, half-tipsy. He caught the boy by the shoulder and hurried François, still sobbing, to Fouquet the barber-surgeon's, where they sewed up his wound. In accordance with the police regulations, they first demanded an account of how he had received it. René lied up-hill and down-dale, while in a corner of the room François monotonously wept.
Fate grinned and went on with her weaving.
4. "Necessité Faict Gens Mesprende"
The Rue Saint Jacques had toothsome sauce for its breakfast. The quarter smacked stiff lips over the news, as it pictured François de Montcorbier dangling from Montfaucon. "Horrible!" said the Rue Saint Jacques, and drew a moral of suitably pious flavor.
Guillemette Moreau had told Catherine of the affair before the day was aired. The girl's hurt vanity broke tether.
"Sermaise!" said she. "Bah, what do I care for Sermaise! He killed him in fair fight. But within an hour, Guillemette,--within a half-hour after leaving me, he is junketing on church-porches with that trollop. They were not there for holy-water. Midnight, look you! And he swore to me--chaff, chaff! His honor is chaff, Guillemette, and his heart a bran-bag. Oh, swine, filthy swine! Eh, well, let the swine stick to his sty. Send Noël d'Arnaye to me."
The Sieur d'Arnaye came, his head tied in a napkin.
"Foh!" said she; "another swine fresh from the gutter? No, this is a bottle, a tun, a walking wine-barrel! Noël, I despise you. I will marry you if you like."
He fell to mumbling her hand. An hour later Catherine told Jehan de Vaucelles she intended to marry Noël the Handsome when he should come back from Geneppe with the exiled Dauphin. The old man, having wisdom, lifted his brows, and returned to his reading in Le Pet au Diable.
The patrol had transported Sermaise to the prison of Saint Benoit, where he lay all night. That day he was carried to the hospital of the Hôtel Dieu. He died the following Saturday.
Death exalted the man to some nobility. Before one of the apparitors of the Châtelet he exonerated Montcorbier, under oath, and asked that no steps be taken against him. "I forgive him my death," said Sermaise, manly enough at the last, "by reason of certain causes moving him thereunto." Presently he demanded the peach-colored silk glove they would find in the pocket of his gown. It was Catherine's glove. The priest kissed it, and then began to laugh. Shortly afterward he died, still gnawing at the glove.
François and René had vanished. "Good riddance," said the Rue Saint Jacques. But Montcorbier was summoned to answer before the court of the Châtelet for the death of Philippe Sermaise, and in default of his appearance, was subsequently condemned to banishment from the kingdom.
The two young men were at Saint Pourçain-en-Bourbonnais, where René had kinsmen. Under the name of des Loges, François had there secured a place as tutor, but when he heard that Sermaise in the article of death had cleared him of all blame, François set about procuring a pardon. It was January before he succeeded in obtaining it.
Meanwhile he had learned a deal of René's way of living. "You are a thief," François observed to Montigny the day the pardon came, "but you have played a kindly part by me. I think you are Dysmas, René, not Gestas. Heh, I throw no stones. You have stolen, but I have killed. Let us go to Paris, lad, and start afresh."
Montigny grinned. "I shall certainly go to Paris," he said. "Friends wait for me there,--Guy Tabary, Petit Jehan and Colin de Cayeux. We are planning to visit Guillaume Coiffier, a fat priest with some six hundred crowns in the cupboard. You will make one of the party, François."
"René, René," said the other, "my heart bleeds for you."
Again Montigny grinned. "You think a great deal about blood nowadays," he commented. "People will be mistaking you for such a poet as was crowned Nero, who, likewise, gave his time to ballad-making and to murdering fathers of the Church. Eh, dear Ahenabarbus, let us first see what the Rue Saint Jacques has to say about your recent gambols. After that, I think you will make one of our party."
5. "Yeulx sans Pitié!"
There was a light crackling frost under foot the day that François came back to the Rue Saint Jacques. Upon this brisk, clear January day it was good to be home again, an excellent thing to be alive.
"Eh, Guillemette, Guillemette," he laughed. "Why, lass--!"
"Faugh!" said Guillemette Moreau, as she passed him, nose in air. "A murderer, a priest-killer."
Then the sun went black for François. Such welcoming was a bucket of cold water, full in the face. He gasped, staring after her; and pursy Thomas Tricot, on his way from mass, nudged Martin Blaru in the ribs.
"Martin," said he, "fruit must be cheap this year. Yonder in the gutter is an apple from the gallows-tree, and no one will pick it up."
Blaru turned and spat out, "Cain! Judas!"
This was only a sample. Everywhere François found rigid faces, sniffs, and skirts drawn aside. A little girl in a red cap, Robin Troussecaille's daughter, flung a stone at François as he slunk into the cloister of Saint Benoit-le-Bétourné. In those days a slain priest was God's servant slain, no less; and the Rue Saint Jacques was a respectable God-fearing quarter of Paris.
"My father!" the boy cried, rapping upon the door of the Hôtel de la Porte-Rouge; "O my father, open to me, for I think that my heart is breaking."
Shortly his foster-father, Guillaume de Villon, came to the window. "Murderer!" said he. "Betrayer of women! Now, by the caldron of John! how dare you show your face here? I gave you my name and you soiled it. Back to your husks, rascal!"
"O God, O God!" François cried, one or two times, as he looked up into the old man's implacable countenance. "You, too, my father!"
He burst into a fit of sobbing.
"Go!" the priest stormed; "go, murderer!"
It was not good to hear François' laughter. "What a world we live in!" he giggled. "You gave me your name and I soiled it? Eh, Master Priest, Master Pharisee, beware! Villon is good French for vagabond, an excellent name for an outcast. And as God lives, I will presently drag that name through every muckheap in France."
Yet he went to Jehan de Vaucelles' home. "I will afford God one more chance at my soul," said François.
In the garden he met Catherine and Noël d'Arnaye coming out of the house. They stopped short. Her face, half-muffled in the brown fur of her cloak, flushed to a wonderful rose of happiness, the great eyes glowed, and Catherine reached out her hands toward François with a glad cry.
His heart was hot wax as he fell before her upon his knees. "O heart's dearest, heart's dearest!" he sobbed; "forgive me that I doubted you!"
And then for an instant, the balance hung level. But after a while, "Ysabeau de Montigny dwells in the Rue du Fouarre," said Catherine, in a crisp voice,--"having served your purpose, however, I perceive that Ysabeau, too, is to be cast aside as though she were an old glove. Monsieur d'Arnaye, thrash for me this betrayer of women."
Noël was a big, handsome man, like an obtuse demi-god, a foot taller than François. Noel lifted the boy by his collar, caught up a stick and set to work. Catherine watched them, her eyes gemlike and cruel.
François did not move a muscle. God had chosen.
After a little, though, the Sieur d'Arnaye flung François upon the ground, where he lay quite still for a moment. Then slowly he rose to his feet. He never looked at Noël. For a long time Francois stared at Catherine de Vaucelles, frost-flushed, defiant, incredibly beautiful. Afterward the boy went out of the garden, staggering like a drunken person.
He found Montigny at the Crowned Ox. "René," said François, "there is no charity on earth, there is no God in Heaven. But in Hell there is most assuredly a devil, and I think that he must laugh a great deal. What was that you were telling me about the priest with six hundred crowns in his cupboard?"
René slapped him on the shoulder. "Now," said he, "you talk like a man." He opened the door at the back and cried: "Colin, you and Petit Jehan and that pig Tabary may come out. I have the honor, messieurs, to offer you a new Companion of the Cockleshell--Master François de Montcorbier."
But the recruit raised a protesting hand. "No," said he,--"François Villon. The name is triply indisputable, since it has been put upon me not by one priest but by three."
6. "Volia l'Estat Divers d'entre Eulx"
When the Dauphin came from Geneppe to be crowned King of France, there rode with him Noël d'Arnaye and Noël's brother Raymond. And the longawaited news that Charles the Well-Served was at last servitor to Death, brought the exiled Louis post-haste to Paris, where the Rue Saint Jacques turned out full force to witness his triumphal entry. They expected, in those days, Saturnian doings of Louis XI, a recrudescence of the Golden Age; and when the new king began his reign by granting Noël a snug fief in Picardy, the Rue Saint Jacques applauded.
"Noël has followed the King's fortunes these ten years," said the Rue Saint Jacques; "it is only just. And now, neighbor, we may look to see Noel the Handsome and Catherine de Vaucelles make a match of it. The girl has a tidy dowry, they say; old Jehan proved wealthier than the quarter suspected. But death of my life, yes! You may see his tomb in the Innocents' yonder, with weeping seraphim and a yard of Latin on it. I warrant you that rascal Montcorbier has lain awake in half the prisons in France thinking of what he flung away. Seven years, no less, since he and Montigny showed their thieves' faces here. La, the world wags, neighbor, and they say there will be a new tax on salt if we go to war with the English."
Not quite thus, perhaps, ran the meditations of Catherine de Vaucelles one still August night as she sat at her window, overlooking the acacias and chestnuts of her garden. Noël, conspicuously prosperous in blue and silver, had but now gone down the Rue Saint Jacques, singing, clinking the fat purse whose plumpness was still a novelty. That evening she had given her promise to marry him at Michaelmas.
This was a black night, moonless, windless. There were a scant half-dozen stars overhead, and the thick scent of roses and mignonette came up to her in languid waves. Below, the tree-tops conferred, stealthily, and the fountain plashed its eternal remonstrance against the conspiracy they lisped of.
After a while Catherine rose and stood contemplative before a long mirror that was in her room. Catherine de Vaucelles was now, at twenty-three, in the full flower of her comeliness. Blue eyes the mirror showed her,--luminous and tranquil eyes, set very far apart; honey-colored hair massed heavily about her face, a mouth all curves, the hue of a strawberry, tender but rather fretful, and beneath it a firm chin; only her nose left something to be desired,--for that feature, though well-formed, was diminutive and bent toward the left, by perhaps the thickness of a cobweb. She might reasonably have smiled at what the mirror showed her, but, for all that, she sighed.
"O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone," said Catherine, wistfully. "Ah, God in Heaven, forgive me for my folly! Sweet Christ, intercede for me who have paid dearly for my folly!"
Fate grinned in her weaving. Through the open window came the sound of a voice singing.
Sang the voice:
_"O Beauty of her, whereby I am undone!
O Grace of her, that hath no grace for me!
O Love of her, the bit that guides me on
To sorrow and to grievous misery!
O felon Charms, my poor heart's enemy--"_
and the singing broke off in a fit of coughing.
Catherine had remained motionless for a matter of two minutes, her head poised alertly. She went to the gong and struck it seven or eight times.
"Macée, there is a man in the garden. Bring him to me, Macée,--ah, love of God, Macée, make haste!"
Blinking, he stood upon the threshold. Then, without words, their lips met.
"My king!" said Catherine; "heart's emperor!"
"O rose of all the world!" he cried.
There was at first no need of speech.
But after a moment she drew away and stared at him. François, though he was but thirty, seemed an old man. His bald head shone in the candle-light. His face was a mesh of tiny wrinkles, wax-white, and his lower lip, puckered by the scar of his wound, protruded in an eternal grimace. As Catherine steadfastly regarded him, the faded eyes, half-covered with a bluish film, shifted, and with a jerk he glanced over his shoulder. The movement started a cough tearing at his throat.
"Holy Macaire!" said he. "I thought that somebody, if not Henri Cousin, the executioner, was at my heels. Why do you stare so, lass? Have you anything to eat? I am famished."
In silence she brought him meat and wine, and he fell upon it. He ate hastily, chewing with his front teeth, like a sheep.
When he had ended, Catherine came to him and took both his hands in hers and lifted them to her lips. "The years have changed you, François," she said, curiously meek.
François put her away. Then he strode to the mirror and regarded it intently. With a snarl, he turned about. "The years!" said he. "You are modest. It was you who killed François de Montcorbier, as surely as Montcorbier killed Sermaise. Eh, Sovereign Virgin! that is scant cause for grief. You made François Villon. What do you think of him, lass?"
She echoed the name. It was in many ways a seasoned name, but unaccustomed to mean nothing. Accordingly François sneered.
"Now, by all the fourteen joys and sorrows of Our Lady! I believe that you have never heard of François Villon! The Rue Saint Jacques has not heard of François Villon! The pigs, the gross pigs, that dare not peep out of their sty! Why, I have capped verses with the Duke of Orleans. The very street-boys know my Ballad of the Women of Paris. Not a drunkard in the realm but has ranted my jolly Orison for Master Cotard's Soul when the bottle passed. The King himself hauled me out of Meung gaol last September, swearing that in all France there was not my equal at a ballad. And you have never heard of me!"
Once more a fit of coughing choked him mid-course in his indignant chattering.
She gave him a woman's answer: "I do not care if you are the greatest lord in the kingdom or the most sunken knave that steals ducks from Paris Moat. I only know that I love you, François."
For a long time he kept silence, blinking, peering quizzically at her lifted face. She did love him; no questioning that. But presently he again put her aside, and went toward the open window. This was a matter for consideration.
The night was black as a pocket. Staring into it, François threw back his head and drew a deep, tremulous breath. The rising odor of roses and mignonette, keen and intolerably sweet, had roused unforgotten pulses in his blood, had set shame and joy adrum in his breast.
The woman loved him! Through these years, with a woman's unreasoning fidelity, she had loved him. He knew well enough how matters stood between her and Noel d'Arnaye; the host of the Crowned Ox had been garrulous that evening. But it was François whom she loved. She was well-to-do. Here for the asking was a competence, love, an ingleside of his own. The deuce of it was that Francois feared to ask.
"--Because I am still past reason in all that touches this ignorant, hot-headed, Pharisaical, rather stupid wench! That is droll. But love is a resistless tyrant, and, Mother of God! has there been in my life a day, an hour, a moment when I have not loved her! To see her once was all that I had craved,--as a lost soul might covet, ere the Pit take him, one splendid glimpse of Heaven and the Nine Blessed Orders at their fiddling. And I find that she loves me--me! Fate must have her jest, I perceive, though the firmament crack for it. She would have been content enough with Noel, thinking me dead. And with me?" Contemplatively he spat out of the window. "Eh, if I dared hope that this last flicker of life left in my crazy carcass might burn clear! I have but a little while to live; if I dared hope to live that little cleanly! But the next cup of wine, the next light woman?--I have answered more difficult riddles. Choose, then, François Villon,--choose between the squalid, foul life yonder and her well-being. It is true that starvation is unpleasant and that hanging is reported to be even less agreeable. But just now these considerations are irrelevant."
Staring into the darkness he fought the battle out. Squarely he faced the issue; for that instant he saw François Villon as the last seven years had made him, saw the wine-sodden soul of François Villon, rotten and weak and honeycombed with vice. Moments of nobility it had; momentarily, as now, it might be roused to finer issues; but François knew that no power existent could hearten it daily to curb the brutish passions. It was no longer possible for François Villon to live cleanly. "For what am I?--a hog with a voice. And shall I hazard her life's happiness to get me a more comfortable sty? Ah, but the deuce of it is that I so badly need that sty!"
He turned with a quick gesture.
"Listen," François said. "Yonder is Paris,--laughing, tragic Paris, who once had need of a singer to proclaim her splendor and all her misery. Fate made the man; in necessity's mortar she pounded his soul into the shape Fate needed. To king's courts she lifted him; to thieves' hovels she thrust him down; and past Lutetia's palaces and abbeys and taverns and lupanars and gutters and prisons and its very gallows--past each in turn the man was dragged, that he might make the Song of Paris. He could not have made it here in the smug Rue Saint Jacques. Well! the song is made, Catherine. So long as Paris endures, François Villon will be remembered. Villon the singer Fate fashioned as was needful: and, in this fashioning, Villon the man was damned in body and soul. And by God! the song was worth it!"
She gave a startled cry and came to him, her hands fluttering toward his breast. "François!" she breathed.
It would not be good to kill the love in her face.
"You loved François de Montcorbier. François de Montcorbier is dead. The Pharisees of the Rue Saint Jacques killed him seven years ago, and that day François Villon was born. That was the name I swore to drag through every muckheap in France. And I have done it, Catherine. The Companions of the Cockleshell--eh, well, the world knows us. We robbed Guillamme Coiffier, we robbed the College of Navarre, we robbed the Church of Saint Maturin,--I abridge the list of our gambols. Now we harvest. René de Montigny's bones swing in the wind yonder at Montfaucon. Colin de Cayeux they broke on the wheel. The rest--in effect, I am the only one that justice spared,--because I had diverting gifts at rhyming, they said. Pah! if they only knew! I am immortal, lass. Exegi monumentum. Villon's glory and Villon's shame will never die."
He flung back his bald head and laughed now, tittering over that calamitous, shabby secret between all-seeing God and François Villon. She had drawn a little away from him. This well-reared girl saw him exultant in infamy, steeped to the eyes in infamy. But still the nearness of her, the faint perfume of her, shook in his veins, and still he must play the miserable comedy to the end, since the prize he played for was to him peculiarly desirable.
"A thief--a common thief!" But again her hands fluttered back. "I drove you to it. Mine is the shame."
"Holy Macaire! what is a theft or two? Hunger that causes the wolf to sally from the wood, may well make a man do worse than steal. I could tell you--For example, you might ask in Hell of one Thevenin Pensete, who knifed him in the cemetery of Saint John."
He hinted a lie, for it was Montigny who killed Thevenin Pensete. Villon played without scruple now.
Catherine's face was white. "Stop," she pleaded; "no more, François,--ah, Holy Virgin! do not tell me any more."
But after a little she came to him, touching him almost as if with unwillingness. "Mine is the shame. It was my jealousy, my vanity, François, that thrust you back into temptation. And we are told by those in holy orders that the compassion of God is infinite. If you still care for me, I will be your wife."
Yet she shuddered.
He saw it. His face, too, was paper, and François laughed horribly.
"If I still love you! Go, ask of Denise, of Jacqueline, or of Pierrette, of Marion the Statue, of Jehanne of Brittany, of Blanche Slippermaker, of Fat Peg,--ask of any trollop in all Paris how François Villon loves. You thought me faithful! You thought that I especially preferred you to any other bed-fellow! Eh, I perceive that the credo of the Rue Saint Jacques is somewhat narrow-minded. For my part I find one woman much the same as another." And his voice shook, for he saw how pretty she was, saw how she suffered. But he managed a laugh.
"I do not believe you," Catherine said, in muffled tones. "François! You loved me, François. Ah, boy, boy!" she cried, with a pitiable wail; "come back to me, boy that I loved!"
It was a difficult business. But he grinned in her face.
"He is dead. Let François de Montcorbier rest in his grave. Your voice is very sweet, Catherine, and--and he could refuse you nothing, could he, lass? Ah, God, God, God!" he cried, in his agony; "why can you not believe me? I tell you Necessity pounds us in her mortar to what shape she will. I tell you that Montcorbier loved you, but François Villon prefers Fat Peg. An ill cat seeks an ill rat." And with this, tranquillity fell upon his soul, for he knew that he had won.
Her face told him that. Loathing was what he saw there.
"I am sorry," Catherine said, dully. "I am sorry. Oh, for high God's sake! go, go! Do you want money? I will give you anything if you will only go. Oh, beast! Oh, swine, swine, swine!"
He turned and went, staggering like a drunken person.
Once in the garden he fell prone upon his face in the wet grass. About him the mingled odor of roses and mignonette was sweet and heavy; the fountain plashed interminably in the night, and above him the chestnuts and acacias rustled and lisped as they had done seven years ago. Only he was changed.
"O Mother of God," the thief prayed, "grant that Noël may be kind to her! Mother of God, grant that she may be happy! Mother of God, grant that I may not live long!"
And straightway he perceived that triple invocation could be, rather neatly, worked out in ballade form. Yes, with a separate prayer to each verse. So, dismissing for the while his misery, he fell to considering, with undried cheeks, what rhymes he needed.
JULY 17, 1484
"Et puis il se rencontre icy une avanture merveilleuse, c'est que le fils de Grand Turc ressemble à Cléonte, à peu de chose prés."
Noël d'Arnaye and Catherine de Vaucelles were married in the September of 1462, and afterward withdrew to Noël's fief in Picardy. There Noël built him a new Chateau d'Arnaye, and through the influence of Nicole Beaupertuys, the King's mistress, (who was rumored in court by-ways to have a tenderness for the handsome Noël), obtained large grants for its maintenance. Madame d'Arnaye, also, it is gratifying to record, appears to have lived in tolerable amity with Sieur Noël, and neither of them pried too closely into the other's friendships.
Catherine died in 1470, and Noël outlived her but by three years. Of the six acknowledged children surviving him, only one was legitimate--a daughter called Matthiette. The estate and title thus reverted to Raymond d'Arnaye, Noël's younger brother, from whom the present family of Arnaye is descended.
Raymond was a far shrewder man than his predecessor. For ten years' space, while Louis XI, that royal fox of France, was destroying feudalism piecemeal,--trimming its power day by day as you might pare an onion,--the new Sieur d'Arnaye steered his shifty course between France and Burgundy, always to the betterment of his chances in this world however he may have modified them in the next. At Arras he fought beneath the orifiamme; at Guinegate you could not have found a more staunch Burgundian: though he was no warrior, victory followed him like a lap-dog. So that presently the Sieur d'Arnaye and the Vicomte de Puysange--with which family we have previously concerned ourselves--were the great lords of Northern France.
But after the old King's death came gusty times for Sieur Raymond. It is with them we have here to do_.
